Back to work

From 11-11-08

I’ve reached the 50,000-word-mark on THE SHOP. This makes me feel good for a couple of reasons. One, 50,000 is actually a real book. I looked it up. According to Harlequin guidelines, some of the lines run 50K to 60K. So that means, if I stopped writing right now, it would be a book. If I stopped right now, the story would go over the cliff (along with the reader.) The book would end in an abrupt, ridiculous and unsatisfying way, but at least it would meet the very low standard of being an actual book. Yay!

Usually, my books run 100K. But this book will probably be shorter—I expect it to come in between 80K and 90K.

The reason for this is I’ve changed some of the ways I write. I’m really wonkish about this stuff, to the point of being a real bore, so I won’t go into it too much. The result is better pacing (in my view), and more actual story up to this point, so now I’m looking down the road thinking, Jesus Mary and Joseph, I’m going to get to the end a lot sooner than I ever did before! This is off-putting. My frame of reference, at least regarding book length, is all shot to hell.

The reason for this? I’m writing a lot more narrative and covering more ground. Have you ever watched a dog agility competition? The dogs go over jumps and walls and they also run through tunnels—usually a nylon tube set on the grass. I picture my book as a dog running through one of these tubes. The dog is the story-line (and also the main character), but there’s all this stuff around him. The stuff around him is the world of the novel, including the setting, the characters, the back story, the relationships, the outside circumstances, the problems. That’s the space inside the tube.

By writing more narrative, I’ve found a way to give the reader a better use of that space. I’ve utilized more of the space inside the tube. I’ll give you an example:

Zoe tried to quell the voices running around like a squirrel on a wheel, wishing instead she and Riley could just go back to shopping trips and hanging on the dock with the guys, texting back and forth with Shane, tending to their Facebook pages, the boat and the pool and the beach and the moonlit parties and Hubbard family lawn barbecues. Riley’s dad’s liquor cabinet, the pot (which she didn’t really care for but she smoked anyway), the damp-palmed, hard edged, heart-pounding thrill when Shane kissed her…It might still turn out all right. Maybe it was a false alarm.

Here’s another one:

Davy Crockett was a giant black man with a bullet-shaped head he shaved every morning. His nickname was “the Gentle Giant,” for his courtly manner. In deference to the name his parents gave him, Davy had a coonskin cap tacked up on the wall above his desk. The thing was moth-eaten and smelled musty, but it was a good talking point. Davy was the PD’s only detective, what they call a generalist. He covered everything. He worked homicide, but he also worked auto theft, smash and grabs, and simple theft. Davy had been a good friend of Dan’s when they were both deputies with the sheriff’s office. They grew up together, kind of (Davy lived in the black neighborhood in Port St. Joe’s) and played on the same football team in high school. “I can tell you what’s on the list, I guess,” he said. “What you want to know?”

Okay, not to get all wonky on you, but that covers a lot of ground. I didn’t do much of that before. It’s kind of like shorthand. There’s so much in all our lives, stuff that affects the way we see the world, and if we can take snapshots of these things all crowding into our psyche at certain times, I believe there’s a more comprehensive vision of the person at the center.

Sometimes I’d plod along. I had a lot of dialogue, and I still have a lot of dialogue, but hopefully, fewer talking head scenes. Dialogue can get away from you and go on pages longer than it should. In my opinion.

Anyhoo, wonk that I am, I call this type of writing “narrative summary” or “summary narrative,” I can’t remember which.

It’s one of many things I’ve been doing to transform my writing.

See? It hasn’t all been watching Morning Joe and fiddling with my electoral map. I been workin’.